Transforming Civilisation

Nafeez Ahmed, member of The Club of Rome and the Earth4All Transformational Economics Commission, has published a blog on 9 January 2025 showing that civilisation could leap into a new era of superabundance – but only if humanity commits to protecting the earth.

He starts with the planetary boundaries framework that tells us how we are disrupting the safe operating space that permits life on earth. We have now breached six out of nine boundaries and are at risk of abrupt and irreversible changes to the Earth System. He says what is missing is the looming obsolescence of the industrial order which is part of a civilisational-scale metamorphosis in which a whole new Human System is emerging.

His main point is that humans are not outside the earth system, but part of the intersection between human and earth systems. He has published a new peer-reviewed paper, ‘“Planetary phase shift” as a new systems framework to navigate the evolutionary transformation of human civilisation’, in Foresight: The Journal of Futures Studies.

The concept of a ‘planetary phase shift’ suggests that the entire human-earth system is in a state of fundamental transformation – that a new human-earth system is emerging. It is a fundamental reality that human civilisation is undergoing a comprehensive systemic transformation, although the shape of the emerging system is unclear. It could still become a range of different things, positive or negative, evolutionary or regressive.

Ahmed develops a new transdisciplinary theoretical model to scientifically understand and track this planetary-scale systemic transformation, so that we can make better choices about how to respond. At the centre of the paper is the ‘adaptive cycle’. This is a four-stage life-cycle of growth, stabilisation, breakdown and renewal which can be seen operating across all natural systems – including social systems, economic systems and civilisational systems. He explores how the adaptive cycle operates at a civilisational scale. He also draws on ‘phase transition’ theory, which looks at how systems change abruptly at chemical and biological levels. Disruptive technologies track the key material phase transitions at play right now. Organisational change allows us to explore the interplay between technology and society. The result is a big picture vision of how industrial civilisation appears to be moving through the last two stages of its current life-cycle: breakdown and renewal, or what could be termed release and reorganisation.

Giant Leap?

One possibility is a giant leap. Planetary phase shift theory sees the material and cultural dimensions of civilisation as mutually constituted and therefore inherently entwined. This means that the foundational technologies of industrial civilisation are bound up with the prevailing industrial organising system, which has to manage and regulate our technological infrastructure within planetary boundaries. But the technological infrastructure of our civilisation is presently facing multiple transitions driving a whole system phase transformation. Every technology that defines civilisation – energy, transport, food, materials and information – is experiencing a transition in which present industrial age technologies are being disrupted, outcompeted and replaced by a new set of technologies across all sectors. The entire material and technological infrastructure of human civilisation is experiencing fundamental transformation.

Central to this transformation is energy. Declining energy return on investment from fossil fuels will drive dependent industries to decline and obsolescence within decades. Meanwhile, solar, wind and batteries are the three new technologies on track to transform the global electricity system. Unlike oil, gas and coal, these renewable technologies experience improving energy return on investment the more they are deployed.

Planetary phase shift theory shows that such technology disruptions, driven forward by fundamental economic factors, are really biophysical in nature because their improving economic competitiveness reflects improving energy efficiency. They are getting better at providing a social purpose with less energy per unit than before. Economically, this shows exponentially improving costs and capabilities.

The entire infrastructure of our civilisation is transforming with the centralised fossil fuel system declining to be replaced by a new system based on the distributed production of energy from renewable resources via networked electrification. If done right, this can dramatically reduce the material footprint of this system while generating far more energy than is even possible at present leading to a form of postmaterialist, networked superabundance.

Widening Gap?

The transformation that is occurring must not only concern the material-technological infrastructure of civilisation, but also its cultural-organisational structures at all scales. We remain trapped in the industrial age operating system with centralised hierarchies developed to manage the old declining system.

With plummeting costs and improving performance, renewables will inevitably outcompete fossil fuels by mid-century, but this is not happening fast enough to avoid dangerous climate change. Also, if the transition is mismanaged it could create chaos, or if deployed within the conventional industrial system, it could create other negative consequences. We could take a ‘giant leap’ in our material capabilities as a species; but we are in danger of aborting that leap, falling into a new dark age – if not into total collapse – if we attempt to take the leap from within the outmoded framework of the old industrial system that is incapable of regulating and governing the emerging system of postmaterialist networked abundance.

The narrow, reductionist and extreme materialist values of the present worldview that elevates the maximisation of human material consumption as the overriding goal, make it incapable of managing a new system that is inherently networked, distributed and participatory – and that must respect planetary boundaries. Only an operating system that recognises the importance of regenerating the earth, rather than simply extracting from it without limits, can circulate wealth and materials for the benefit of all, and for the health of the planet.

Uncertain future

Planetary phase shift theory shows us the critical choices we need to make at all scales about the systemic risks and opportunities emerging right now and over the foreseeable future. For instance, there are some technologies that are far better than others; but equally, there are also transformative and regressive ways of designing and deploying those technologies. If we do not optimise the advantages of these technologies, we could create systems which are dysfunctional. If the emerging clean energy system is owned and controlled by billionaire oligarchs, for instance, this would create problems. If we failed to invest in deployment in developing countries, where sunlight is much more abundant, we would both fail to help poorer countries, and not capitalise on the clean energy that could contribute to our collective prosperity.

On the upside, if the emerging system was owned closer to the point of production by individuals, households and businesses, accompanied by freedom to share and exchange, this would create a new type of energy commons that could distribute prosperity in ways that were unthinkable in the old system.

How we choose to design these material systems is not just about ‘materials’, but about what we value and what we are really committed to; about our worldview, how we govern, and how we manage our social and cultural institutions.

System change

If we are so focused on the admittedly horrifying symptoms of the ongoing collapse of the prevailing industrial paradigm, we may miss the significance of the material and cultural reorganisation emerging today. This reorganisation can be both negative and positive, but the reality is it is happening, and we need to make choices about it. Planetary phase shift theory highlights what is truly possible. If we deploy the emerging material trends rationally, without weird hang-ups, incumbent barriers, self-flagellating narcissism or regressive self-defeating culture wars, we can rapidly transition to a new ecological civilisation that could provide abundant energy, materials, food, transportation, and knowledge to all without hurting the earth.

We cannot be sanguine about the risks ahead. The window of opportunity to achieve this transformation is rapidly closing on our current path. We risk failure if we do not begin to make far more planetary-oriented decisions at all levels. We need a rigorous, scientifically-grounded framework to guide decision-making so that we can mitigate the negative impacts of change and empower reorganisation to maximise chances of moving into a whole new life-cycle for humanity. This requires addressing the mutually constituted nature of technology and society, coming to grips with what technologies are scaling, which are worth accelerating, and how they should be designed, structured, owned and guided in the context of a new socio-political, economic and cultural paradigm of planetary stewardship.

REFERENCE CITED: Ahmed, N. (2024), ““Planetary phase shift” as a new systems framework to navigate the evolutionary transformation of human civilisation”, Foresight, Vol. ahead-of-print https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-02-2024-0025. The full text is available to read at academia.edu

SOURCE: based on https://www.clubofrome.org/blog-post/ahmed-civilisation-superabundance/